Esben Klint

Background

Esben Klint was born on 18 June 1915, the son of the architect and professor Kaare Klint and Le Bredsdorff. The family lived in Java, Indonesia, at the time, and moved back to Copenhagen a few years later. His mother died when he was three, and much of his childhood was spent with his grandparents, the architect and furniture designer P. V. Jensen-Klint and Mathilde Jensen-Klint. He finished a cabinetmaker's apprenticeship in 1934, with a bronze medal, and a year later graduated from the construction master's school in Copenhagen.

Signature Style

Carl Hansen & Søn describes him as industrious, meticulous and perfectionistic, a designer who stayed his father's disciple, as his church furniture, lamps and furniture show. Travel was his main source of inspiration, always aimed at experiencing architecture.

Notable Works

His early jobs included his father's Bethlehem Church project in Copenhagen, furniture for Skive Hospital with Mogens Koch, school furniture for E. G. Asplund and wooden school furniture with Børge Mogensen. After 1954 he took over several of his father's unfinished works, and he regarded the completion of Grundtvig's Church in Copenhagen as one of his greatest achievements. For Carl Hansen & Søn he designed the KK97170 Safari Footstool, made to match his father's Safari Chair.

Legacy

Esben Klint opened his own studio in 1954 and, from 1960, also worked full time for the Royal Building Inspector Nils Koppel on state churches and castles. He exhibited at the Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition, the Copenhagen Cabinetmakers' Guild Exhibition and in Fredericia with Børge Mogensen, and died in 1969, aged 53.